Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 22 - The Perfect Opportunity

 It was five years ago by RSD time that Xavier had experienced the A Grade Time mage’s memory and attained the spell pattern for Pocket Time Stream.

It had come as an absolute shock that the exact thing he needed to permanently learn the spell was in the Information Packet he’d received. It took a great deal of training and skill to be able to read the blueprint that was a spell pattern in one’s own mind, let alone in another’s. Xavier, having taught eight people besides himself how to do such a thing, had come a long way in his understanding of it.

There were plenty of Denizens out there who could walk the rooms of their mind in a similar way to how Xavier could, but those Denizens couldn’t see their own spell patterns. That required a particular mental state, the mental state needed to perceive a rune’s connection to the universe.

This was something most inscribers could do, but not all inscribers.

That wasn’t all it required, either—it required one to unlock that part of their mind. The blueprints, such as spell patterns, the System implanted into a Denizen’s minds were usually hidden from the Denizen mind entirely, to the point where Xavier had found no information about them anywhere in the System Shop or in any of the literature he’d read about both the System and spell patterns.

Xavier had stumbled upon this ability when he’d been trying to alter the parameters of his Time Alteration spell and allow it to wrap around him as he stepped through, and out the other side, of a portal. It was Yarien, the C Grade leader of the party he’d teamed up with on the Hell Moon Thazamar, who had suggested he try to wrap the time dilation field around him through a portal.

Xavier later discovered, through use of a different Information Broker, that this shouldn’t have been possible at all at D Grade. Using stubborn, sheer force of will, Xavier had made it possible. He doubted Yarien knew that it shouldn’t have been able to be done.

When it came time to help the others locate their own spell patterns in their minds, a valuable step that was needed in order to create them into the powerhouses he wanted them to be, it proved more difficult than he’d expected.

Rather than during one breakthrough session, it had taken many months for each of them to achieve, and the only reason they’d managed it at all was through his guidance. They’d had to master the meditative state required to feel an active rune’s connection to the universe while walking the rooms of their minds, while at the same time they’d needed to jailbreak the spells to push them past their limited parameters.

Siobhan had borrowed the term “jailbreak” for that was needed to be done from something people used to do with phones and other devices pre-System integration. Jailbreaking would allow them to gain access to the root operating System to access features that weren’t intended to be available.

Once, while having dinner in the tavern, Siobhan had posited one day being able to jailbreak the System itself. After she’d said the words she’d paused, glanced furtively around, then looked at the ceiling. When a minute had passed and nothing had happened, she released a breath.

Rebecca followed her up by wondering if one could jailbreak the universe itself, wondering if that was what the System did. “If so,” Rebecca had said, “we might be able to control the System, perhaps even destroy it.”

A flash of bright light followed by a massive boom so loud it shook the building and everything on the table came from outside a split second after Rebecca had finished speaking. In a slight panic, they’d all rushed out of the tavern to see what had happened. Xavier, having flicked on his Farscope lens when the boom sounded, already knew what they would find.

A crack of lightning had come down from on high and crashed into the centre of the smooth circle of wood in the middle of the Roving Seed Base, causing spiderweb fractures to spread from the still-burning epicentre all the way to the edges.

The sun was out, shining down on them. The sky was clear of clouds. Time was still moving so slow outside the border of the Roving Seed Base that it looked to be frozen.

There was no sign of anyone, or anything, that could have caused that lightning to strike.

Xavier had been the first to walk toward the circle of wood. He stopped at the edge and peered up at the sky. A feeling of abject terror filled him as he saw something suddenly appear. Another flash of lightning, coming out of… Nowhere. The lightning didn’t come down from the sky the last bolt. Instead, it zig-zagged this way and that in a deliberate pattern that instantly became clear when the lightning stopped, and the path that it had been taken was seemingly seared into the very fabric of reality above them.

The pattern made up a series of words. A sentence. One he’d read before, but never in such a context, and only ever as a notification.

THE SYSTEM IS WATCHING

The terror Xavier felt was like nothing he’d ever experienced. His mouth became dry. His throat seized up. His hands clenched and shook. There was something unnatural about the terror he felt, as though the will of something powerful was imposing it upon him.

He was very careful of his thoughts in that moment. Xavier had a mission, one that he’d kept to himself. One that only Bones, through their shared telepathic bond, was aware of.

A mission to take down the System, so he could change the way the universe was run. So he could replace the constant conflict with peace.

It was an impossible dream, but so was everything else he wanted to do—everything else he’d done.

This was never something he’d uttered to another, whether aloud or through a Communication Stone. When he’d first had the thought, he’d wondered if the System had known. Surely it was powerful enough to read his mind—it could do so many other things.

Now, he wasn’t so sure. A reaction like this… It made him wonder. He’d seen people be in fear of offending the System, both in his own universe and in others. Is this what happened when someone spoke of taking it down? A warning came from on high, something that couldn’t be ignored?

No. The System is already watching me. Now, it’s watching all of us. And a warning like this… Something tells me it only comes when the System thinks a threat to itself might actually be possible, even if that threat couldn’t be carried it for a long time from now.

He could be wrong about that. Perhaps this did, indeed, always happen. Maybe these warnings were commonplace.

It wasn’t something he was willing to test—not out loud.

But this event implied the System didn’t actively read his thoughts, else it would have warned him a long time ago.

Bones knows, that means the telepathic bond we share hasn’t been hijacked by the System… But the System prevents, actively blocks, people from giving information about tower floors through Communication Stones. I’ve felt that before. Either those blocks are built into our minds upon integration, or the System actively monitors such correspondence.

If he ever was to share his plan with another, Xavier would have to make sure it was done by other means. A telepathic spell of some sort, or through a bond like the one he shared with his soul bound weapon.

The warning seared that was seared in the fabric of reality flickered out of existence almost as swiftly as it came. The words, though they’d hung in the sky over Earth, would only have been visible to the nine Denizens inside the Roving Seed Base where time moved differently to the outside world.

The terror that had gripped Xavier was shared by all of them. They didn’t utter a word about the warning, or about Rebecca’s idea. Howard’s daughter looked more shook up than any of them.

The smooth circle of wood was repaired, the factures healed by the Roving Seed Base. But try as they did, they never managed to get the burn mark out of the centre.

It remained there even to this day.

The nine Denizens walked back to the table inside the tavern, but none of them were able to finish their meals.

While jailbreaking the System wasn’t something they spoke about again, jailbreaking a spell was something they all eventually ended up being able to manage. It was a difficult process, and Xavier couldn’t find any evidence of it being done in the Greater Universe.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t done, just that if it was that information was highly guarded.

It was for this reason that Xavier suspected the A Grade whose memory he’d experienced wasn’t even aware of the remnant they’d left behind—the entire spell pattern. They’d altered the memory with the intention of making sure it showed off the spell and how the spell felt.

That had opened a window into their mind, where the spell originated.

It also opened up a massive number of possibilities.

No longer would Xavier need to track down a specific Denizen or beast in order to steal a spell from them using Recursive Analysis to gain access to the spell pattern. Now, all he needed to do was contact an Information Broker and ask for detailed information on a spell, including a memory of another Denizen using it.

It wasn’t as efficient or easy as using the Spell Credit he’d attained when he’d gained the Wayfarer of the Infinite Path class. But that was hardly relevant, as he still hadn’t managed to gain another Spell Credit. He was sure there must be a way, but he had no idea what that way was.

With this ability in hand—to take a spell pattern from a stored memory—the System Shop became an even more valuable resource.

Though it wasn’t quite correct that he would no longer need to hunt for a spell. There were rare spells out there, coveted spells, ones he’d only heard rumours about—like the spell that allowed that B Grade beast in the First Sector to universe hop—and other spells that either no one had ever been foolish enough to provide details about to an Information Broker, or the information was so expensive and hard to attain that it didn’t matter if it could technically be bought, it was still far, far out of reach from Xavier.

Still, the discovery had revolutionised the way they all gained spells. Sharing spells between them was already something they were able to do, but now it was as though a warehouse worth of spells had its doors thrown open to them.

They used it to their advantage as best as they could.

Pocket Time Stream, though it was the first spell Xavier had attained this way, wasn’t the first spell he’d cast gained from another’s memory. He had managed to learn the spell when he’d etched the pattern into his mind, but he wasn’t able to cast it without the required mix of energies.

That didn’t mean the spell pattern wasn’t useful. He didn’t need to be able to cast it from his own body, all he needed to do was draw the pattern in the air, activate, then initiate it, and it took that energy straight from the universe.

There were certain limitations, however.

The spell pattern was limited to how it would function as a Rank 150 spell, coupled with the strength of his attributes. As such, the spell didn’t last for a great deal of time. And though it didn’t utilise Xavier’s energies, it did exhaust him. There were some spells that were mentally and physically exhausting to cast, regardless of how much energy they used. This exhaustion wasn’t something Xavier often suffered from, with his attributes being far superior to anyone else at his grade, meaning his abilities far outweighed a spell’s rank. This effect was amplified by the fact that he also had a Reality Core, allowing his body, mind, and soul to be further enhanced by an advancement foreign to his corner of the multiverse, making him both a D Grade Denizen and a Tier 2 cultivator.

Even so, none of that seemed to matter when using Pocket Time Stream. Perhaps because it was intended for high B Grades or A Grades to use.

At first, maintaining the spell pattern for any significant length of time was completely impossible. He could make it work for a second, sometimes two, before the spell pattern flickered out of existence and its effects disappeared with it.

There were some spells that had such short cooldowns that this was indeed enough to replenish them, but Xavier didn’t see it as a workable solution. When the spell pattern flickered out of existence, it left him an exhausted wreck. It was the only time since he’d reached Tier 2 that he’d actually required any sort of real rest to recuperate.

Half a day would pass before he felt like himself again. Then it would take an hour, with Body Cultivation active and working at his fastest possible pace, for him to redraw the pattern.

Xavier didn’t let this stop him, however. The challenge only made him smile—even if through gritted teeth. This was something that felt impossible. Something for him to overcome. But if he did, the rewards would make him unimaginably more powerful than he already was.

And so, he kept pushing.

Something else was happening when he activated and initiated the Pocket Time Stream spell pattern, as well. The first time he used the spell pattern it hadn’t simply exhausted him. He’d felt a pressure on his mind, body, and soul. The pressure was instantly familiar. His last experience of it, inside the Arakashinai Queen’s chamber, was seared into his very being, and would no doubt forever leave its mark on him.

The pressure almost made him pull back. Almost. But it was only a small dose of what he’d experienced before. Still, he’d never felt pressure like this from the use of a single spell pattern. The spell he was using was clearly supposed to be out of his reach—just as what he’d done to kill the Arakashinai Queen should have been out of his reach.

No one else at his grade should be capable of killing a million drones then turning them all into soul apparitions all in the barest fraction of a second to kill an enemy two grades higher than their own.

Doing that had cost him much, but ultimately, he had come out the better for it.

And that was why he didn’t shy away from the pressure. He’d been intending to one day recreate the pressure he’d experienced that day on the one-hundred-and-fifty-fourth floor of the Tower of Champions, though he intended to do it to a far, far lesser degree that one had caused his shattered cores, broken mind, and injured soul.

Whatever that pressure was, he would need to train himself to endure it—assuming such a thing was even possible—if he wished to use the full capabilities of spell patterns.

The Pocket Time Stream spell pattern was the perfect opportunity.